Not just business: Madbury Town Meeting social as it is functional

MADBURY — Following in the footsteps of generations before them, approximately 65 residents turned out for Madbury’s annual Town Meeting Tuesday night.

The meeting, which is the official place for voters to appropriate funds and take care of other town business, is as social as it is functional. Residents show up early to get a seat for the annual event, which is often talked about for weeks, and sometimes years, after it happens.

“My favorite story is a few years ago we were talking about an exception for blind people on their property taxes. Somebody said we should remove the exception because all of the blind people would move to Madbury,” Marsha Barden of Hook Mill Road said before the meeting began.

Barden said she loves Madbury’s town meeting. She was at the meeting with David Olson, also of Hook Mill Road.

“It’s the best way to do your governing in a town,” Barden said. “Usually there is a discussion on the budget and you never know, something that looks straightforward, like putting a sprinkler system in at the cemetery, that was a big deal.”

Alison Cloutier, who lives on Hayes Road and moved to Madbury in 2005, said having an old-fashioned town meeting really makes her feel like she is part of the process. Sometimes a warrant article will generate questions and she learns more about how that article came to be. Often, the selectmen have done their job and the voters feel confident about the budget they present. Either way, Cloutier said, everyone’s opinion is heard.

Tuesday night was no exception to the rule. Residents voted to pass all of the warrant articles presented by the Board of Selectmen with little discussion. The town will have $1,262,753 for general municipal operations; $20,000 will be appropriated for the police equipment capital reserve fund to go toward the purchase of a new vehicle; $55,000 will be appropriated for the building of a new library; $42,500 will be appropriated and set aside for the future purchase of a new fire truck.

The only warrant article that required a voice vote was Article 19, submitted through a petition put together by Rachel Cilley of Moharimet Drive. It requested that the town urge the New Hampshire Legislature to join 500 local municipalities and 16 other states in calling upon Congress to create a constitutional amendment that would safeguard fair elections through regulations in political spending. The written notice would clarify that constitutional rights were established for people, not artificial entities such as corporations, Cilley said.

A few residents got up to speak about this article. Half of them were in favor of the article. The other half did not feel that town meeting was the venue for such a proposal.

“This is a small group of people representing a whole lot of people. It’s very awkward. It’s as if we as a town have voted to support a Democratic or Republican initiative,” one man from Nute Road said.

The article was rejected 38-20.

Not all aspects of government were conducted by voice or hand vote. Polls in Newmarket were open for voting on Articles 1 and 2. Article 1 was to chose town officers. All of those races were uncontested. Article 2 was related to a revision to the aquifer and wellhead protection overlay district. Voters took the suggestion of the planning board and approved it.